Raydiance Hires New CEO

Photonics.comMay 2011
PETALUMA, Calif., May 13, 2011 — Raydiance Inc., a developer of ultrafast laser technology, has announced that entrepreneur and software industry veteran Dick Pierce has been named chief executive officer. Pierce succeeds company founder Barry Schuler, who will continue as chairman.

Pierce most recently was CEO of Orbital Data Corp. (acquired by Citrix in 2006), which offers solutions to speed up the delivery of software applications over wide area networks (WANs). Before heading up Orbital, Pierce was a founding member of Inktomi, a search and software infrastructure provider. During Pierce’s tenure, Inktomi’s revenues grew to more than $250 million in five years, culminating in a public offering in 1998. Pierce began his career at Intel, ultimately running marketing for one of the company’s $3 billion microprocessor divisions.

“Dick Pierce has repeatedly demonstrated an ability to lead companies through rapid growth phases,” Schuler said. “As Raydiance brings its enabling ultrafast laser technology to large opportunities in the electronics, medical devices, automotive and defense industries, Dick’s experience will be instrumental in our success. We are extremely pleased he is joining the company.”

“Raydiance has extraordinary opportunities before it. Ultrafast lasers represent a disruptive technology that will change the way people design and build things. My mission will be to marshal a very talented team in addressing the opportunities that will build this company into a high-value enterprise,” Pierce said.

That branch of science involved in the study and utilization of the motion, emissions and behaviors of currents of electrical energy flowing through gases, vacuums, semiconductors and conductors, not to be confused with electrics, which deals primarily with the conduction of large currents of electricity through metals.